San Diego County Businesses Lost $5.3M When Trump Admin Shut Down Border Crossing for 5 Hours Last Thanksgiving

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Cars line up to cross into the United States at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on March 31, 2019, in Tijuana, Mexico. (Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

San Diego County Businesses Lost $5.3M When Trump Admin Shut Down Border Crossing for 5 Hours Last Thanksgiving

Cars line up to cross into the United States at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on March 31, 2019, in Tijuana, Mexico. (Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

When the Trump administration abruptly shuttered the San Ysidro border crossing for five hours on the Sunday after Thanksgiving following a skirmish with a group of migrants, holiday traffic snarled for hours south of San Diego.

Businesses on the U.S. side of the border lost about $5.3 million in sales, local officials said. Tens of thousands of people were temporarily stuck on both sides of the border, creating chaos in nearby areas.

President Trump now is threatening to exponentially increase the scale of that disruption, vowing to indefinitely close the U.S. border with Mexico to show his resolve — and his pique — as tens of thousands of Central American migrants continue to jam legal entry points and unguarded remote areas.

Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said Sunday that the president, who has threatened to close the border before, is not bluffing. But White House officials declined to provide details of what, if anything, Trump intends to do.